Heart drug failures raise doubts about high-tech pharmaceutical approaches

The next time someone tells you that artificial intelligence, or any other new technology, will cure all diseases, point out the efforts being made to combat heart attacks and strokes, which together constitute the greatest mortality in the developed world.

Because time and time again, pharmaceutical researchers have learned the same hard lesson: technologies that were supposed to speed up the availability of new drugs to patients have failed. Two studies presented Saturday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting are a perfect example. A new understanding of genetics was supposed to increase the chances of success – and it doesn’t.

A study showed that a Novartis drug, pelacarsen, had no effect on the rate of heart attacks and strokes despite reducing a substance in the blood called Lp(a), which genetics suggests should reduce cardiovascular risk. Another large study, led by Novo Nordisk, of an anti-inflammatory targeting a protein called IL-6 also showed no benefit.